"he's a good boy."

I'm fascinated by the ways that family dynamics and crime are related, both before and after a crime takes place. I'm also intrigued by the way police handle (or don't) particular crimes. If I had taken those Social Deviance and Criminal Justice classes a year earlier than I did, I would have gone on to pick up a minor in CJ... but now I just get my fix via Law & Order. Anyway, my mother recently shared this story with me about her coworker in Orange, Texas, who was the victim of a theft. And of inept policemen. And of an enabling father.

The school nurse came home to find her house had been robbed. After the police arrived (40 minutes later and she lives within spitting distance of the department), they asked her if anything was missing. She had waited for them across the street at a neighbor's house in case the robbers were still inside, so she said she didn't know, but hadn't been upstairs. One officer asked her if she wanted them to wait while she went upstairs and checked. The other officer tapped the first and softly said, "We're the ones with the guns. We need to go up and check."

All of her jewelry had been taken. The neighbor had noticed two teens in the nurse's back yard that afternoon and asked what they were doing. They told her they wanted to talk to her about a fight at school but would come back later since she wasn't home. So the neighbor (who later couldn't identify the kids at all) at least knew to tell what she had seen. The nurse happened to have a friend who was an Army Special Forces soldier. He told her he would ask around at the high school and he'd tell her who had done it... which he successfully did. He got the third guy, who had been the lookout, to rat out the two who had actually taken the jewelry. Those two had some of it on them at school that day, so the nurse got back some of her stuff.

The school nurse and the judge handling her case attend the same church. After the boys were arrested, the father of one approached the nurse at her church one morning (unaware of who she was) and asked if Judge Campbell was there. She hadn't seen him. The father said, "I need to find him because they're gonna make my son wear an electronic ankle bracelet and he won't stay where he's supposed to so then they'll put him in jail. So I need to tell the judge not to make him wear the bracelet."

The nurse said, "Do you know who I am? Your son broke into MY house and stole MY jewelry!" The dad asked if she had gotten it back and she told him several pieces were still missing. He described one piece and she said it wasn't hers. He said, "Hmm, that must have been from one of the other houses."

So, the victim is supposed to secure the crime scene, do their own investigation, and assist the criminal's family in lessening the punishment?

They were probably the same two officers who responded to our house in Orange after a break-in/vandalism and proceeded to handle fingerprint-rich evidence without wearing gloves. They had zero intentions of finding the vandals.

*no doubt, what the father would say about his son. have you ever noticed on the news when we're looking for an identified criminal, the family gets on tv to say, "he's a good boy... he's just... he's always been a good boy."